Sunday, 2 January 2011

Some thoughts on little green men

No not the aliens that your typical tinfoil hat wearing nutter will recount in detail whilst drooling slightly - but as some of you will know I've been a user of Google Android for a couple of years now, on a number of different phones, versions and builds. Currently I'm using the native Android v2.2.1 on the Google reference Nexus One platform - and I have to say it's really rather good...

Naturally there are however some annoyances that I'd like to see tweaked :-

Memory Related

More memory - the standard 512 MB ROM & 512 MB RAM (and in my unit an additional 32GB of SD card) might sound big compared to some devices, but the phone really would benefit from at least 1GB (but better 2GB) of RAM. With 160+ applications installed I find I'm now at the point of 'remove one to install one' re the dreaded 'low memory' warning...

Cache management - with a number of common applications (eg Browser, Tweetdeck etc) I've started to notice that they consume RAM memory as cache but don't release it automatically, leading to applications having 10-15MB of RAM memory as cache (often triggering the 'low memory' warning) until you manually clear the cache using the application manager.

Not an Android core issue but some applications should handle memory better - for instance ChompSMS stores MMS images in RAM and not on SD storage, and refuses to receive text messages if the 'low memory' indicator is showing despite having GBs of SD card space free.

SD Card Storage Related

There should be the ability to force any application to be moved or installed onto SD card storage - works fine on 'rooted' ROMs so should be a possible setting for standard ROMs

Google to enable their applications to install on SD card storage, rather than the majority currently refusing to support it (for example gMail, Earth, Maps, Voice Search, YouTube, Listen, )

To be able to 'partition' the SD card (or have a better USB driver) so that when the phone is connected to a PC via USB the applications & widgets on the SD card continue to operate.

Verified developers - ability for developers to get some for of 'tested & verified safe' certificate from a trusted authority, to ensure that the developer name shown in the MarketPlace really is from the perceived developer / company

Verified applications - ability for applications to get some for of 'tested & verified safe' certificate from a trusted authority (eg to protect against malware & trojans etc)

The application profile should be updated to show if the application supports move/install to SD card storage, and how much RAM the application uses after install (not just how much storage it needs)

Ability to manage my phone's applications from a desktop PC browser - to be able to uninstall existing applications, browse & search the marketplace to install applications and upload my own APK applications for install. All of these changes to then be synchronised over-the-air to the device.

To be able to do 'bulk backup/restore/installs' of applications onto devices - eg when I change device to be able to 'backup' all my existing installed apps and then 'restore/install' them onto new device in a single action

To better align the various MarketPlace versions around the world - it's getting more than a bit irritating seeing applications that only exist in the USA version of the MarketPlace and not the international ones

Sort out billing and payments to international developers - it's frustrating to only be able to get the 'lite' or 'free' version of an application via the MarketPlace, but then have to go to some other website to purchase a license key for the full featured version.

It would be good to add-in age rating 'certificates' (eg as per films & PC games etc) for applications in the MarketPlace

To be able to search and/or filter the display of applications in the MarketPlace by attributes (eg age suitability, support SD or not, size, release / update dates etc)

Miscellaneous

Support for folders on the home screens (and more home screens - think a 5x5 grid of screens rather than current 1x5) - to allow applications to be grouped together into nested folders on any of the home screens

Add back the WMA / WMV codecs that were previously in Android 1.x - yes MP3/MP4 are fine but support for WMx should also be standard as it was originally

WiFi connectivity - now it might just by the CostlyCo utter junk that I'm currently suffering as a wireless router, but there does appear to be some fragility with working with wireless N based wifi networks

Of course the topic of proxy servers and authenticated proxy servers via the wifi connection needs to be resolved in order to be able to use to enterprise networks properly

Enable Live Wallpapers to work automatically upon reboot if they've been installed onto SD

Full native OS / device backup/restore into the cloud - not just contacts and application purchases but all content on the phone. Yes you can purchase applications to do this but it really should be standard.

To be able to completely uninstall some of the standard OS bundled applications I never use or want (eg Facebook & Twitter native clients etc)

To be able to do remote phone location discovery/tracking and also secure erase management from a PC browser (ie should I leave my phone somewhere I can remotely discover where it is and issue a 'remote destroy' command etc)

It would also be rather useful if they could 'fix' the Google 'Finance' application, as it spend more time failing to work or synchronise than it does working

For some of my previous posts re Android see here - as I said I'm a major fan of Android and what it's done to overturn a lacklustre & incumbent marketplace (anybody remember Symbian?). So for 2011 I'm looking forward to Android v2.3 & v3.0 to see just what of above gets done, and how far this real OS flies onwards past the competition...

1 comment:

a lot of your complaints about apps and/or widgets, live wallpapers, etc. being enabled immediately after reboot if installed to SD or should still run if the SD card is mounted elsewhere is a tough one. 1st the home screen and launcher (among other items and including widgets and application stores) are loaded much earlier in the boot process than mounting the SD card, which is considered an external storage device. Second, I'm not sure you can't install to SD out of the box. That's a freebie in Froyo (2.2) and you have the capability to move a lot of apps to SD. Obviously there are a ton of work-arounds to cache items, etc. You can repartition things and move mounts around as well as optimize file systems (ext3/ext4), but I think you're talking more in terms of out of the box, and I can agree with you there.Hey, let's start a company that does full cloud based backups of all the worlds new Android devices.... "for a fee" :-)Lastly, you can do a lot of the home screen customizations you're looking for with home screen replacements like LauncherPro Plus and ADW EX. Those home screen folders with alike apps, how about a custom icon for that. No problem. And no, you do not need to have root access to install these home launcher replacements?Feel free to reach out to me with questions, I already follow you on twitter and of course this blog :-)

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About Me

Scottish pessimist - IT infrastructure architecture and strategy in large telco.
Storage is my speciality but am also a stealth Rhubarb picker, Cricket watcher, TVR driver and Laser sailer.
The views & comments on this blog are my personal ones, and are not vetted or represent any past, current or future employers. Oh and the speiling and gammar could be a bit duff :)